Power in My Hand: Women Poets, Women Artists, and Social Change
Until August 30, 2019
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Washington, D.C.
www.nmwa.org
A shared yearning for free expression has animated an enduring solidarity between women poets and artists. Using words and images, brimming with passion and determination, they communicate with and inspire one another across geographic boundaries and historic eras. Such devotion is evident in Muriel Rukeyser’s honor poem for the German artist Käthe Kollwitz and in Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party homage to Emily Dickinson. The critic Lucy Lippard has argued that “making poetry out of politics, making art from lives lived outside of power, and making politics out of that art and poetry—these are the three solid dimensions, the third power of the women’s liberation movement.” This collection of printed poems, artists’ books and art objects celebrates these creative and social bonds.
Photo: Judy Chicago (L) and volunteer work on the Emily Dickinson plate in The Dinner Party studio, ca. 1977; Photograph by Linda Shelp; Judy Chicago Visual Archive, Betty Boyd Dettre Library & Research Center, National Museum of Women in the Arts
